Cecily and Christy did a lot of translations the previous days, frequently till early in the morning. They did a great job and I start feeling ashamed pushing so much work to them. Today we gave them less work, hope they can recover a bit. The translation work is quite difficult, and I start nowadays to understand why through the discussions with them. The wording we use in English is related to the context and synonyms with a slightly different meaning are translated into the same Chinese word. To get around this issue they have to go to a more descriptive mode. Therefore they keep coming back with questions as they need to understand the words used in a phrase in the given context in this in full detail. Also, several words simply don’t exist; most probably as the words are introduced recently in their language history. For example, this morning during breakfast we still discussed the difference between ‘participative’ and ‘contributive’. So, explaining the same message again and again in different ways is the best thing that can be done to ensure the message is passed along.

My own Chinese is not improving, despite all efforts and support from Cecily and Christy. Today I started some trials in writing, I start to pickup some simple characters, but the few I know makes it useless.

#ibmcsc china

Taking notes during the meeting, and practicing Chinese

This evening I went downtown with my colleague Megan, and found a very small place for dinner. From the outside we saw a menu with pictures, but it was still unclear what we were going to order, and what the different options were. I used my mobile and called Christy, explained her that we need a big steamed fish, two bowls of rice, and two cokes. I passed the phone along to the waitress … and a bit later a delicious fish was served. Again experiencing the language barrier, and feeling like an illiterate. But we survive, the fish was great, enjoyed the evening, and we strolled back to the hotel crossing downtown.

The fish ordered using translation by mobile phone